Oil Sands Production Stresses Canada's Dry Northern Plains

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To squeeze oil from millions of tonnes of tar-laden sand requires similar amounts of hot water. After the sand is excavated, the material is crushed and then treated with 40 degree C water and caustic soda to turn it into slurry. It is then pumped, sometimes several kilometres, to an extraction plant.

At the extraction plant, even hotter water is added to the slurry, where it is agitated and the bitumen oil skimmed from the top. Bitumen is much thicker than traditional crude oil, so it must be either mixed with lighter petroleum (either liquid or gas) or chemically split before it can be transported by pipeline for upgrading into synthetic crude oil. Every cubic metre (1,000 litres) of oil produced requires between 2 to 4.5 cu m of water. A million barrels a day of oil production translates into roughly 2 to 4.5 million barrels of water a day.

Most of this water comes from the Athabasca River. Existing oil sands operations and ones that have been approved have been granted water rights allowing the removal of 349 million cubic metres of water each year for 40 or more years. Planned oil sands projects will increase the water use to 529 million cubic metres, according to the Pembina Institute's report, "Down to the Last Drop". By comparison, fresh water usage in Israel is about 50 cubic metres per person per year, while Canada's average is 125 cubic metres.

While that appears to be a lot of water, the oil industry will be taking just three percent of the river's base flow, according to Greg Stringham, vice president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. However, those base flow measurements were done many years ago, said Dan Woynillowicz of the Pembina Institute and the report's co-author. Pembina is a Calgary, Alberta-based environmental group. And the water is not returned to the river because it is contaminated.

If drier conditions prevail, as predicted with climate change, there is a risk of the Athabasca River and some of the area's wetlands drying up in the fall, Woynillowicz said.

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http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13924